Diggester writes: "We all know that Symbian is breathing it's last, yet Nokia has decided to give it a last shot with it's novel 808 PureView smartphone announced today.

Boasting a mind boggling 41 Mega-Pixel rear camera, wait, Yes, you read it correct and it's not a typo, it really is 41 Mega-pixel. It has set mind-blowing industry standards by integrating such a high end imaging technology. One could have never imagined to enjoy such an enormous amount of pixels in a smartphone. But, Nokia's trend changing PureView technology, Carl Zeiss optics and some complex pixel-over sampling algorithms have made it possible."Link to Original Source

Majix writes: Firefox Mobile, the mobile browser developed by Mozilla based on the same engine as in the recently released Firefox 3.6, has finally hit version 1.0. The first device to be officially supported is the Nokia N900. With a long list of features, Firefox Mobile looks to be the most complete mobile browser to date. Highlights include the familiar Awesome Bar, Weave Sync for sharing your browser state between your PC and mobile, and of course tabbed browsing and Firefox add-ons. With the Nokia 900 and Firefox Mobile 1.0, even Flash content including the normal YouTube site is working, showing that a mobile browser does not have to equal a compromised Internet experience.Link to Original Source

ceplinboston writes: From April 2011 all intergovernmental documents in Denmark will be in ODF. If this will also mean a change to OpenOffice remains to be seen however.

OOXML however is out. It is considered to not be good enough to be treated as an open standard. And trust me, Microsoft really tried to convince the danish politicians. But as it seems their arguments in support of OOXML (and also their numerous attempts to discredit ODF) have failed.

mliu writes: In what is sure to be a blow to the already beleaguered stand alone GPS market, Nokia, the global leader in smartphone market share, has released a fully offline-enabled free GPS navigation and mapping application for its Symbian smartphones. Furthermore, the application also includes Lonely Planet and Michelin guides. Unfortunately, the N900, which is beloved by geeks for its Maemo Linux-based operating system, has not seen any of the navigation love so far. With Google's release of Google Navigation for Android smartphones, and now Nokia doing one better and releasing an offline-enabled navigation application, hopefully this is the start of a trend where this becomes an expected component of any smartphone.Link to Original Source

abushhiwa1976 writes: Nokia is making its navigation service free to all GPS-enabled Nokia devices in a move that will help the company better compete in the smartphone market against the likes of Apple and Google.My opinion for Nokia GPS its good idea for all other countries who does not has GPS map route and they do not have GPS facility , like Libya they do not have GPS service, it will make the life easy for the people who lives in Europe and Africa .Link to Original Source

recoiledsnake writes: Business Week is reporting that Apple is in talks with Microsoft to replace Google as the default search engine on its iPhone, according to two people familiar with the matter. "Apple and Google know the other is their primary enemy," says one of the people, who's familiar with Apple's thinking. "Microsoft is now a pawn in that battle." Apple is also working on ways to manage ad placement on its mobile devices, a move that would encroach on Google's ad-serving business. The person familiar with Apple's thinking says Apple has a "skunk works" looking at a search offering of its own, and believes that "if Apple does do a search deal with Microsoft, it's about buying itself time."Link to Original Source

CWmike writes: Google's decision Tuesday to risk walking away from China (Um, the world's largest Internet market) may have come as a shock, but security experts see it as the most public admission of a top IT problem for U.S. companies: ongoing corporate espionage originating from China. It's a problem that the U.S. lawmakers have complained about loudly. In the corporate world, online attacks that appear to come from China have been an ongoing problem for years, but big companies haven't said much about this, eager to remain in the good graces of the world's powerhouse economy. Google, by implying that Beijing had sponsored the attack, has placed itself in the center of an international controversy, exposing what appears to be a state-sponsored corporate espionage campaign that compromised more than 30 technology, financial and media companies, most of them global Fortune 500 enterprises. The U.S. government is taking the attack seriously. Late Tuesday, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton released a statement asking the Chinese government to explain itself, saying that Google's allegations 'raise very serious concerns and questions.' She continued: 'The ability to operate with confidence in cyberspace is critical in a modern society and economy.'Link to Original Source

Frankie70 writes: Beware, enemies of India: Star Wars are back in fashion. With perennial (and nuclear armed) foe Pakistan always teetering on the brink of political collapse and neighboring regional superpower China taking greater strides into space technology, India has announced that it is developing an exo-atmospheric "kill vehicle" that will knock enemy satellites out of orbit.Link to Original Source

Luke O'Sullivan writes: "Recently I went on holiday to Hong Kong (I live in Singapore) and picked up a copy of Left4Dead 2 for the PC. I got it back to Singapore only to find I couldn't install it because apparently it's region coded. So I contacted Steam with proof of purchase (a photo of the receipt and another of the installation key) to ask if I could exchange it for a key for my region and they refused, without explanation.

The game is cheaper in HK than Singapore, but only a little. And in any case, I didn't buy it because it was cheaper, I bought it because in Singapore it comes in a stupid non-standard A3 cardboard envelope rather than a standard DVD case. This was something else Steam just ignored when I raised it with them. I'm not a game retailer looking to buy hundred of copies in HK and profit on the price difference by re-selling them in Singapore, I'm an individual consumer who wanted to buy the product in a *standard* format which should have been available in his own territory but wasn't, hence the resulting mess. Which piece of market research suggested to these people that PC gamers in Singapore like their games to come in giant cardboard envelopes, for heaven's sakes? The x360 version is just a normal DVD case. Why oh why?

Now, furthermore, last year I ended up buying the original Left4Dead on holiday in Australia, again because I didn't want the same non-standard packaging the Singapore version of the original L4D for PC came in, and it worked fine. So was I really supposed to expect that wouldn't be the case this time? Historically, if you buy consumer PC software such as a video game, there has never been any reason to suspect it won't work so long as you meet the system spec. I bought L4D in Australia in 2008, and it worked fine in Singapore; so what reason did I have to think if I bought L4D2 in HK in 2009 it wouldn't work fine in Singapore as well?

Oh yes, the copy of L4D2 that I bought did say on the box that its for Hong Kong and Macau only, as Steam support pointed out to me. It said so *in tiny print on the back at the bottom*, which wouldn't be visible unless you read every word on the entire box before you bought it. I'm not questioning, ultimately, that as a business Valve/Steam have the right to introduce region coding if they so choose, whether to protect their pricing structure or because of censorship issues or both. Then, the choice lies with the consumer. Fine.

What I do question is how they have gone about doing it. Valve/Steam made the T&Cs about as unnoticeable as it was possible to make them while still actually having them on the box. Moreover, there was no reason for me to expect them to be there in the first place as these kinds of T&Cs have never been part of the PC gaming scene. Given the way piracy has eaten into the profits of PC gaming, anyone prepared to shell out hard cash should be treated with a lot more respect.

I'm not going to rant about how I'll never buy another game from Valve again, as they make some great titles. Nor am I going to rant about how 'Steam sucks', because actually in many ways its a great service. But I do think that in cases like this they could treat their legitimate paying customers an awful lot better, and its sad that the only recourse I have against them is to hope that I can shame them into doing the right thing by getting them some negative publicity on Slashdot."

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes: In SONY BMG Music Entertainment v. Tenenbaum, defendant has filed a motion for new trial, attacking, among other things, the constitutionality of the jury's $675,000 award as being violative of due process. In his 32-page brief (PDF), Tenenbaum argues that the award exceeded constitutional due process standards, both under the Court's 1919 decision in St. Louis Railway v. Williams, as well as under its more recent authorities State Farm v. Campbell and BMW v. Gore. Defendant also argues that the Court's application of fair use doctrine was incorrect, that statutory damages should not be imposed against music consumers, and that the Court erred in a key evidentiary ruling.Link to Original Source